A Bad Boy Stole My Bra – Lauren Price

Imagine waking up in the dead of night to find your hot new neighbour dangling out of your window. What’s more, he’s clutching your tattiest bra in his hand.

What. The. Actual. Fudge.

When bad boy Alec Wilde moves in next door to Riley, sparks fly. After their ‘unconventional’ introduction, Riley is determined to get her own back. A nemesis is just the distraction she needs: inside, she’s barely holding it together. It’s game on.

But behind the banter, there’s a side to Alec that Riley actually likes. How can she get through to the real him when she can’t even take herself seriously?

I’m 99% sure I read this on Wattpad, but I honestly didn’t remember much from the book so it didn’t really make any sort of difference in how I read this book (in terms of comparing it to the online, amateur, drafted version to this edited and professionally published one). However, knowing it came from Wattpad was always in the back of my mind, and I think even if you didn’t know, you could tell.

This book was very . . . typical teen-ish, I’m not sure how else to explain it. It had that typical high school setting with the jocks, the mean popular girl, and the main character who had to be awkward and sees herself as an outcast/loner (when she clearly wasn’t). I hate it when books do this. Riley kept repeating how she was an outcast, a loser, a loner, but the book never portrayed her that way. So why do it? It’s perfectly acceptable to write about a MC who just fits in. Is neither above the radar or on it. IT HAPPENS. (of course there’s nothing wrong with being above or under, but don’t say she is one of those things but then portray her as another. Where is the consistency?).

That grated on me slightly. As well with Alec, and how he’s a ‘bad boy’ but nothing about him is bad? People just make up rumours?? And she’s like wow what a bad boy?? Like once?? But he’s not?? I just.

This is where the whole ‘wattpad’ element comes in. For someone whose been on that site for seven years now, this is typical. You have these bad boy – loner female characters, who aren’t really either of those things, but the book ‘markets’ them in order to gain interest. However, the characters are neither of these things, and readers like them anyway.

I mentioned how this is typical teen-y, which I’m using as an umbrella term to also cover ‘cliché’. Hello, typical mean girl character. We have Tiana, whose reason for hating Riley we later find out (it’s ludicrous and pathetic, a bit of a stretch) and it’s just . . . ugh. She’s the typical mean girl, with the parents on the school board, who blackmails, wants the new hot boy, puts other girls down, etc. And she has no character whatsoever. She’s a very one dimensional ‘villain’ and it was boring. If her character was more developed and nuanced, it would’ve worked better. I didn’t care about her and ultimately knew what she was going to do to Riley (it was obvious, not much about the plot was). That took away from the excitement of the book.

I am truly just fed up of seeing these one dimensional female characters in YA. Stop making them just so tropey! This isn’t to say mean girls don’t exist but having them just one-dimensional and as bland as a piece of cardboard isn’t good writing.

Ah, the writing . . . it felt so childish, and amateur-ish at times. I’ve mentioned the lack on good characterisation, and that is down to poor writing. The writer relied to much on Riley telling the reader things, and not actually using her words to convey to the readers what she wanted to get across.

It was also typical cliché writing. It wasn’t terrible, but for a published book I think I expected better.

Just want to go back to the plot: ALSO SO PREDICTABLE. Of course (especially since this was a Wattpad book) you have the typical ‘gets too drunk and wakes up in his bed not knowing what happened’. Honestly. That needs to die. Just pretty much every *dramatic* thing that happened you could see coming a mile away . . .

I’ll move on to positives, because there are some of those:

NO SLUT SHAMING. YAY. I hate it when you have the females slut shaming each other, calling each other whores etc. There was none of that. There’s an incident with Tiana and Chelsea, but that’s about it. Yay. Congrats book.

The characters did have some development! Riley and Alec both learnt how to break down their walls. Riley gained confidence in herself.

(Just another negative now – I feel like there were too many side characters for them all to be developed. We also had her mum, her brother, his mum and sister, Violet, Chase, Joe and Dylan and too often they just blended in to one and had no real development of their own. I think if there were lesser characters then the author could’ve focused on developing these side stories (except they didn’t actually have much plots outside of Riley and Alec…but there you go)).

It was witty and funny. There were some moments that made me laugh and grin like a fool. Ultimately books, at least for me, are there to entertain and this certainly did that. I liked Alec (he wasn’t a douche YAY) and Riley, and the ‘slowburn’ of their romance.

Sometimes though the jokes got too dominating, and that’s where the amateurish writing came in. It focused too much on just having humorous scenes between the characters that didn’t really mean anything in the long run.

So yeah. The writing, plot, characters, could often be too cheesey and cliché that it became a little bit too like . . . ugh, but ultimately it wasn’t that bad. This is definitely one of the better books I have seen come from Wattpad (see my Bad Boy’s Girl review for reference on what a bad published Wattpad book looks like).

I think this is a 2.5. Maybe a 3. I need to think on it!

The Dazzling Heights – Katharine McGee (The Thousandth Floor, #2)

Thank you to Netgalley / HarperCollins / Edleweiss for this book in an exchange for an honest opinion!

New York City, 2118. A glittering vision of the future, where anything is possible – if you want it enough.

Manhattan is home to a thousand-story supertower, a beacon of futuristic glamour and high-tech luxury… and to millions of people living scandalous, secretive lives.

Leda is haunted by nightmares of what happened on the worst night of her life. She’s afraid the truth will get out – which is why she hires Watt, her very own hacker, to keep an eye on all of the witnesses for her. But what happens when their business relationship turns personal?

When Rylin receives a scholarship to an elite upper-floor school, her life transforms overnight. But being here also means seeing the boy she loves: the one whose heart she broke, and who broke hers in return.

Avery is grappling with the reality of her forbidden romance – is there anywhere in the world that’s safe for them to be together?

And then there’s Calliope, the mysterious, bohemian beauty who’s arrived in New York with a devious goal in mind – and too many secrets to count.

Here in the Tower, no one is safe – because someone is watching their every move, someone with revenge in mind. After all, in a world of such dazzling heights, you’re always only one step away from a devastating fall….

 

What is it with this series that keeps drawing me in???

It’s several things really – I love the mashup of genres this has. It has elements of a mystery/thriller, combined with that classic teen drama, filled with those archetypal characters you’d see on shows such as Gossip Girl. On the surface, it probably sounds a bit of a mess – but somehow it all comes together in a combination that works? Not to sound like a broken record, but yes, like beloved show Gossip Girl.

The Dazzling Heights is a fantastic sequel. It continues on the story of the Thousandth Floor not to long after it left, and we’re thrown back into the mess of things. We are dumped in the middle of the drama and the characters – some new – and how they’re coping and using what happened at the end of the first novel in living their lives.

The characters develop – like Leda – and you get to see a more humane side of them. You see others being given opportunities they’ve never had before and it’s interesting in seeing them cope. Others cross dangerous boundaries and it’s so dramatic waiting for them to be caught.

This novel started off with a very strong sense of direction and plot that then unfortunately died out after that first chapter. It’s hinted at about three more times all the way through, before it’s dramatic climax at about 87% into the book. This was disappointing and I feel like we should have had more of this throughout the whole novel, and not just towards the end. It was too quick to end when it had only just started and that was disappointing. And although this quick ending will no doubt have consequences in the third novel, I feel like it was wasted and this books sense of purpose was ultimately lost.

Having said that – this book did deal with the aftermath of events in book one. While, like I said, the overarching plot wasn’t well-developed and ended before it even began, each character had their own subplot. This was good – it was nice seeing how everyone dealt and the actions of each character, and seeing how they now interacted after everything had passed. It made it tense – with all these deep dark secrets between them – and who would snap first. But some relationships took a turn for the unexpected.

I wish other characters – such as Cord – had larger parts in this book and were developed more. Cord, even though he’s not a main character, is my favourite. I love him and Avery’s relationship, and I liked having more of that. Others like Leda and Watt . . . so much dodgy history between them, but seeing their relationship come to develop was interesting.

So yes, I did really enjoy this one – it was a good sequel. I think it’s up to par with the first one, which in a way, disappoints me because I was hoping for this one to blow me away. But still – with the quality matching the first, which was very good, I can’t complain too much because at least it’s consistent.

My only other problem with this is adding in another point of view character whose only objective, for the subplot of another character, was to come between them. I didn’t care for this new character. They were just there to stir the pot, and while, with how this book ended I have no doubt they’ll be stirring up trouble in the third book this still didn’t make me care about this person. Their point of view should’ve been given to a character already established. Also – while the first had problematic elements of characters being drugged and taking advantage of, this one dealt with a student/teacher thing. While it wasn’t as bad as it could’ve been, I was still unhappy with the way it was ultimately dealt with. I’m just happy all the characters weren’t happy with this relationship and that it was condemned – just not enough.

So while there was a lot explored in this – there is still a lot more to come out and be explored that I can only hope will happen in the third. For example, all the drama between Brice, Rylin and Cord to come to light. But overall, this was very pleasing second novel, and if anything it seems to have paved the way for a really exciting third, and what I can only hope will be the novel that will ultimately blow me away with the shock / wow / drama factor.

Three very good stars